Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-05-25
The Trout Liar.

As the season for trout advances tne
stories of the men who go fishing begin
to float through the atmosphere. In
view of that fact the following from an
old sportsman will be read with much
interest and will serve to put the unsus-
pecting on their guard. He said: 1.-THE
trout liar is the gem of all liars. He is
the saddle.rock liar; a moose among the
antelopes; Hyperian to a satyr; he is the
long tailed comet among the quiet
twinklers. All men cannot be trout
liars. The trout liar must be born with
a peculiar fitness for the task, aud then
he must be educated to it and devote
himself TO trout lies as life work.
When David said ia his haste, "All men
are liars" Saul and Abinidab, Doeg and
the Edmonite, had probably just re-
turned from trout.6shing down along
the brook in the valley of Elah, and were
telling what they had seen and what
they had done, and David, as he listened
to them numbering the unarmed
truth, naturally supposed there was no
trath left in the hearts of men in all the
wide world. The trout liar exceeds oil
other liars, because the man who has
done any amount Of trout fishing is, to
q certain extent, q Travelled man. 1t is
his custom to sit on the veranda and tell
his storles, crushing all competition and
putting his feet on the neck of all striped
bass ana landlocked- d-salmon liars. If it
happens that just as he has told his
masterpiece the opposition front liar
comes in with a right bower, genuine
royal fush Of q trout lie, the first liar is
hurt to the heart; detected and sorrow
ful, he says not another word that bight.
But he draws new inspiration from de-
feat, aud the very next place he goes to
he appropriates the lie that paralyzed
him, and unblushingly claiming it as his
own, defiantly crusnes down all pitlful
competition with a crowning lie that
only two days or SO before crushed him.
There are several kinds of trout liars.
The liar OF weights, who never catches
more than half dozen trout day, but
they can weigh anywhere from eight to
ten pounds. Then there is the liar of
numbers, who always catches SO many
dozen in an hour and twenty.eight
minutes. And there is the liar OF
places, who knows hidden pools, dark
and still. In the secret places OF the
rocks, that are just boiling over with
trout, and he takes you, under many
oaths of secrecy, by stealthy and circuit
GUS routes, to these places, aud you fish
in them for eight mortal hours without
a nibble. But you can never corner
trout liar. Arithmetic, facts, science,
probabilities. precedent, general prin-
ciples and the eternal fitness of things
may combine in overwhelming array
to prove him the awfnlest civil
lied liar in the world; but it does
not disturb him in the least. He lies
on, calmly, confidently, enthusiast.
cally, always locating the scene of his
lies so far away that he is pretty certain
that you will never go there. There are
limits to human belief. You may be.
lieve what the candidate says on the
stump; you may believe what man
tells you in horse trade; you may be-
lieve the army liar, and you may believe
the snake liar, but when a man takes
his cigar from his lips and with simple
prefix of place and date starts in on
trout story, bar and bolt and lock and
double lock the gates of your belief
when he gets to the mace. Don't be.
lieve one solitary trout, though it weighs
less than pound. Under the shadow
Of the trout, truth dies; and the man
who fishes four days and hooks only one
lone trout so small that he loses it in his
empty basket, comes home the biggest
liar of them all.